Her sister has been gone to the frontlines for weeks now. Or was it only a few days? She couldn't remember as days started to blend with each other. Her mane kept growing and while she did enjoy its new look and feel, its changes worried her. Her sister wasn't around for her to express her concerns.
She always been the lone type, this situation wasn't new. So why was she feeling that desperate? It was as if her heart was now a vast void and when she would probe it she could feel billion years of loneliness. The simple idea of such a long span spent alone was overwhelming, making her head hurt and spin. It was as if an unknown entity had taken residence insider her. Of course, that was quite a silly idea, isn't it?
When would her sister come back? She couldn't say.
As hard as she tried, ignoring it just became harder. Somehow, as her mane grew so did her powers. Spells that would require her efforts and focus were now performed in a blink and without a sweat. Others were now looking at her with far more respect in their eyes, something she didn't mind much.
She looked outside her room at the city, brightly lit by a morning sun. She always loved that sight. Something inside her twitched and hurt. She backed away from the window and hid in the shadows. Why were the sun rays hurting her? It never happened before, it was as if her head and mane were on fire.
She needed her sister.
If he wasn't close to passing out, Mark would have thanked Applejack and Rainbow Dash from keeping Pinkie Pie off him as her first reaction was to hug him. Right now, he was only happy to be there. When he came back in the prison cell, they were all happy to see him alive, even if he wasn't in an amazing shape.
"I knew you would win." Applejack proclaimed.
Mark rolled his eyes as he was lying on his unhurt side. "You know you're a terrible liar?"
She laughed, "I think I heard that before."
"He fought well," said the jailer while standing in the doorway.
To Mark's confusion, Keeper didn't look surprise and made no comment when the Doctor removed Twilight's constraint with his sonic screwdriver. She didn't waste time and start casting some healing spells on his wounds.
"Don't move," she said. "I'm not a good healer. I'm afraid you will keep some scars from that."
"That's good. He will look like a pirate," Rainbow Dash claimed.
Twilight frowned at the comment and simply decided to ignore it. "Once we are home, a real doctor will be able to remove them."
"If you don't mind, I would like to stay away from any hospital for a few years. I got my share of those."
After about ten minutes of focus and spell casting, she moved back. "Well, that should be it," Twilight said. She noticed Mark had passed out or felt asleep, she couldn't say which.
"Already? You're a far better healer than you say," Rarity commented.
She rolled her eyes and pointed at Mark. "No, his wounds weren't very deep. Only his shoulder will probably need more work later." She turned around and looked at the old gryphon. "I thought it was a fight to the death?"
She was surprised to hear the gryphon laugh. "He was playing with him. I don't think he took him seriously. The prince obviously didn't expect that little pony to have that much kick in him."
"Prince?" five mares shouted as one.
"He kicked a prince? That's awesome!" Rainbow Dash said with a huge smile. "What?" She asked seeing everypony else staring at her.
"That's bad!" Twilight shouted in horror. "Mark killed a prince of the kingdom?"
The old one stopped laughing. "No, he didn't. But no doubt he will have a shattering headache for a few days." A guard interrupted the gryphon and whispered to his ears. He looked at the guard with surprise while this one shrugged and left. "Well, that was unusually fast." He turned toward the ponies. "The king sent his decision; you're free."
"Just like that?" Rarity asked.
"Just like that," the jailor answered. "Well, you might get more than what you bargained for, but it is not my place to say. I will go fetch your bags while you wake him up," the gryphon said while pointing at Mark. He turned around and left leaving the door unlocked behind him.
Rainbow Dash pushed Mark and got no reaction. "I don't think he is sleeping."
"Maybe the heat got to his head?" Fluttershy proposed.
Twilight frowned. "He walked across the desert, I think he got a good resistance to that."
"He wasn't a pony back then," Applejack proposed.
Rarity moved closer and stared at Mark's face. "He's faking."
"No sport. Can't a guy rest two minutes?" Mark said while trying to look angry.
Twilight poked him on his hurt flank making him winced in pain. "No. Time to go sleepy head."
Two guards came with their bags and escorted them outside the city. While walking across the city, the crowds of gryphons stopped talking and shot angry looks at the ponies. Some whispered while pointing claws at them while other would keep their younglings from even looking at them.
"Why they look at us like that?" Pinkie Pie asked.
"I don't know," Applejack answered. She looked at one if their guards for an answer but he only reply with a sharp move of his head, signaling to move. "And I think our friends here are the non-talkative type."
"I noticed the same thing when we were captured," Twilight added.
"And in the arena," Mark said.
"I was sure this city was much bigger than this," Rainbow Dash commented. "What?" she asked after noticing the look of her friends. "Stop staring at me every time I talk!"
"Well duh, we are in the past, silly filly!" Pinkie explained as if it was the most obvious thing.
While walking, they couldn't shake off the feeling that they were seen as dangerous monster, invaders or even some kind of traitors. All the gryphons kept their distance, the crowd letting them an empty path as if they were carrying some sickness. After a walk without any incident, they arrived at the edge of the city, which was also the wall of the volcano. A large and long tunnel was dug directly through it. The black rock, cooled lava, made the passage very dark. After a minute walking in the tunnel, the sun light couldn't reach them anymore. It was obvious that the gryphons had a better eye sight than the ponies.
At the end, two huge doors made of blackened steel were closed. One of their guards went to talk to the dozen soldiers that were keeping the entrance to the city. After what appeared to be an intense discussion, the guard came back while some soldiers disappear in smaller tunnels around the doors. Sounds of gears and chains impacting against each other reverberated in the tunnel while the doors were slowly moved apart. They stopped moving almost as fast as they started, leaving only a space large enough for a pony to go through.
One of the guards simply made a rude motion toward the doors, the message was clear, leave and never come back. The ponies crossed the doorway one after the other. As soon as the last one was clear of the doors, they started closing and shut with a loud bang. Outside, they were blinded by the sun, but once their eyes were used to the bright light, they could clearly see they were not alone. Mark was the first to recognize the gryphon.
"You! What do you want now?" He spitted out in anger.
"My life is your," the gryphon with a cracked beak whistled while slightly bowing down. The motion was clumsy as if the gryphon never really executed it before.
Mark looked at the other ponies, but he could clearly see on their faces that he wasn't alone left without any understanding. His sight stopped on the pony that looked the less confused. "Rainbow! You know gryphons better than us, what is he talking about?"
"I'm not sure."
He could see he wasn't alone with no idea how to handle this new situation. He looked at Twilight but she simply returned his own probing look and shrugged in a way that said 'your problem, deal with it'.
"Huh... Yeah, about your life... I decided to spare it, remember?" For some reason the bowing gryphon wasn't making him at ease at all. The fact that he was still much taller than him even while bowing wasn't helping. "So... Shoo... Huh, go back doing whatever a gryphon does."
"You're my master. I will follow you and do as you ask."
Mark's eyes went ballistic, that was the last thing he was expecting or wanted and from the look of thing the other ponies were in the same state. Except one, which the loud laugh managed to get everybody's sight locked on her, Rainbow Dash was lying on her back obviously having a hard time to breath.
After some long awkward moments, Rainbow managed to control her laughing enough to ask "When you spared him, you claimed his life?"
"I did not! I only said what Keeper told me was the ritual words. Something along the lines 'his life is mine to dec...'" Mark's face went cold when he understood the underlying meaning of that sentence. Seeing his face, Rainbow Dash started another round of laughing.
The Doctor put a hoof on his shoulder and with all the seriousness he could gather, claimed, "Well, now you have a new friend." The distress on Mark's face pushed the other ponies overboard and they all joined Rainbow in laughing.
"Come on! It's..." He decided to simply not say anything as nobody was listening anyway. He could see that the gryphon looked as annoyed as him. "You! Since I'm your... bleh... 'master', can't I just order you to go back to your life and leave me alone?"
The gryphon looked weak and defenseless. "I can't. I've been exiled."
"What? Exiled for losing?"
"No. For casting a dishonorable challenge," he explained.
The ponies managed to stop laughing and stared at Mark and the gryphon. "What are you talking about? You're not allowed to fight ponies?" Mark asked more confused than ever. That made no sense to his mind, if there was such a basic law, the prince of the kingdom would have known it. Remembering the reaction of the king when he stepped up in the arena, that explained the idea of a dishonorable fight, but not the no-pony rule.
"No..." The gryphon stared at the ground as if he was deeply ashamed of something and he was caught in the act. He pushed a pebble with his claw. "We are not allowed to challenge a child."
"What?" He shouted but no one heard him. The damage was done, the seven other ponies were all on the floor laughing.
At some point the Doctor managed to get on his hooves and put one back on his shoulder. Mark could see tears coming from his eyes from laughing too much. "You know... kid," was all he managed to say before going back to the ground laughing. Mark shot him an angry look.
He simply decided to wait for everypony to calm down before trying to say anything. Once the noise was almost gone, he turned back toward the gryphon which obviously didn't enjoy the laughing party. "Sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm probably older than you. Thinking about it, the only one who's older than me here is the Doctor."
"I'm twenty one cycles," claimed the gryphon with whatever remained of his pride pointing his chest with a claw.
"And I'm almost thirty. So scram! Exile lifted!" Mark shouted back, obviously losing his patience.
"But... you have no marking on your flank and... you're so small!" The comment made Mark put a hoof on his face as the others went back to another round of laughing.
"Look, I'm not gonna argue about that. Point is, I'm older than you. That's it. Go back to your life. Now," Mark managed to say calmly but with a huge dose of irritation in his voice.
"I'm sorry, but a decision made by the king and the council of the elders is always final," the gryphon answered while looking genuinely disappointed.
Mark's right eye twitched as the others kept laughing, he couldn't find a way to get rid of the gryphon and he looked quite determined to not leave him alone. "Fine!" Mark screamed while he started walking away. "Whatever! One more crazy, I'm sure no one will even notice."
Since there wasn't any fog, they didn't have any problem getting their bearings and they walked in the direction they hoped would be the Equestrian's boarders. They were released late in the afternoon so they only had a few hours before they stopped for the night. Twilight got her magic working and soon they were lying or sitting around a bright fire.
When asked, the prince claimed the news of their released was broadcasted to all the patrolling guards and they wouldn't try recapturing them. They were all relieved as none of them wished to be caught again.
Somehow, the gryphon managed to sit beside Mark and was staring at the fire. Mark felt the gryphon choose this place on purpose, but he had no way to prove or disprove it. But one place or another, the simple presence of the creature that not even a day ago wanted nothing more than to kill him was making him nervous.
"Seriously, I have no idea how you manage to eat hay." Mark said looking at no pony in particular.
"What's wrong with hay?" Applejack asked raising her head from her own meal.
Mark dropped his bowl on the ground. "What's wrong? It's dry, tastes nothing and feels like I'm chewing on wood or something."
"I guess it's an acquired taste," Rarity commented.
He tried to get rid of some hay stuck in between his teeth. "I guess they forgot something when they changed me."
"Fried hay is good!" Rainbow Dash added.
"Wrapped in bacon maybe." Mark whispered. He looked at the gryphon who appeared confused by the discussion. "What's your name?" he managed to ask.
The gryphon moved around but kept his sight away from the pony. "It's not important," he finally came to answer.
It almost made Mark crack a smile. "Well, I can't just go around and call you 'hey, you' or 'gryphon' or even 'mountain of feather'."
The poor attempt of humor went totally unnoticed by the gryphon. "I'm Freewind, but you can call me whatever name you see fit, master."
Mark noticed that Twilight's head raised at the mention his name, but the last word made Mark go ballistic. He decided he would ask Twilight later if she knew that name. He stood up and walked in front of the gryphon. "Alright! Listen very carefully, this will be my first and last order; you will never call me master ever again. You will never act as being under me or under my command. Is that understood?" Mark shouted while pointing a hoof at him.
"Everyone is commanded by another, no one has no leader," he replied.
Mark sat down. "I don't deny that!" He shook his head. "But having a leader never meant a slave-master relationship." He felt Freewind didn’t understand him, so he decided to talk in words the gryphon would understand. "Blindly following someone's order display no honor, only stupidity. Honor can only come if you communicate with your leaders, understand their motivation and truly believe in what they say."
Freewind looked down as he thought of the pony's word. He wasn't expecting any kind of wisdom coming from a pony about honor and somehow he felt his claim about being older than him was true. "Why didn’t you kill me?"
Mark's hoof moved almost on his own as he slapped the gryphon. Both slightly moved back in surprise as the gryphon held his jaw with his claw.
"You truly have no idea, do you?" Mark asked angry. He remembered of how the gryphon acted in the arena. "Honor... I think I start to understand you problem. You're mixing honor and fame." He sat back and stared at the much bigger creature. "Alright, what is honor?"
Freewind looked around in surprise, he couldn't predict any of the pony's action. He was expecting him to answer that he spared him to humiliate him or to gain control over him. Instead he slapped him while it was obvious the other ponies were minding their own business. "I don't know."
"You're lying. You have you own idea of what it is. Whatever, I will give you my own point of view." Mark moved closer and stared him in the eyes. "There is only one creature alive that can tell you if you're acting with honor or not, it's yourself. The actions that bring you the most honors are those no one sees you do, because they are the only one you perform without ever thinking about what others think about you."
"The only thing you are never allowed is to give up. The only moment your death bring you honors is if you die for someone else survival. If you were to die by any other way, it would be dishonorable. Do you understand why?"
Freewind looked around for help, but it was obvious there wasn't any. "I... huh... no."
"Because when you die, you prevent yourself from performing more honorable actions in the future. You can do mistakes now, but you can always fix it tomorrow. You can dishonor yourself today, but you have the rest of your life to gain it back. Giving up is never an option, when you survive while you should be dead, you're thankful for the chance you were given and you move forward."
"It... It doesn't explain why you let me live."
"Knowing how I see honor, what kind of honor do you think I would have gained killing one that wasn't anymore a threat to my friends' lives or my own? Do you really think preventing someone else from performing potential future honorable acts would bring me any? If you want to go by the numbers, I would say I would lose as much honor as you could do."
Freewind didn't answer and only stared at the ground, but his eyebrows, which in his case were only a line of small feathers of slightly darker color, were hard at work moving around as he was deeply thinking about Mark's speech.
Mark offered him his right hoof. "Name's Mark Anderson."
He took the hoof with his right claw and shook it. "Mark... that's not..."
"A pony name, I know."
Mark left the gryphon deep in his thought and walked up to Twilight. "Hey."
"Nice speech," she replied. "But I'm afraid all that stuff about honor isn't much in ponies mentality."
"Replay the last part of my speech and replace the word honor by friends or friendship."
Twilight frowned. "That's... weird."
Mark laughed. "Probably. I saw you react at his name. What is it?"
She came close to him and whispered. "It's terrible; we are doing a horrible mistake." Her face was proof that she meant it.
"Why?"
"Freewind, I know this name because it’s in the history book. He is not supposed to be exiled, he is to become king!"
Mark's eyebrows rose up. "You're sure? Like he couldn't be another Freewind?"
She shook her head in negation. "Another one who is prince?"
"Well, might be a common name in the royalty." She stared at him, obviously skeptical. "Right, not likely." He looked at the gryphon which was lying on the ground his eyes closed. "Anything else those history books said?"
"Sorry, I don't remember much."
"Wait! Do you mean you know when we are?" Applejack asked who obviously overheard their conversation.
"I'm not sure, gryphons have very long life span and most of Equestrian's books about their history are written in a myths and legends way. They never talk about dates and era," she explained. She lowered her head in shame. "And I never learned their calendars, which is quite different from ours."
"Hey!" Everyponies turned their head to look at Pinkie Pie who bounced in front of Freewind. "I'm Pinkie Pie! Want to be friend?"
"I'm surprised she waited that long," Twilight whispered to Mark.
The gryphon was looking genuinely confused by the bouncing mass of pink in front of him. "I'm sorry, but not now."
"Oh! I know this! You want some space, right?"
"Right," he replied eyeing Pinkie as if it was some kind of trap.
"Freewind," Twilight asked, hoping to divert his sight from Pinkie. "I noticed all the gryphons were giving us some angry look as we were leaving the city. Any idea why?"
"Well, you're the enemies," he answered as if it was as obvious as water being wet.
The ponies all looked at each other wondering what he meant. After a moment they all locked their sight on the gryphon that suddenly didn't feel quite at ease. "What the hay do you mean?" Applejack asked back. "I thought the gryphon’s kingdom was friendly and all," she said while looking at Rainbow Dash, who simply shrugged in answer.
"Allied? We are at war. We have been for almost a decade."
All the ponies turned their head to stare at Twilight. "I... I don't know! I never heard of any war! There are no words about that in any of the history books I've read. There have been... disagreements, battles even, but no war!"
The gryphon looked at each of the pony one after the other and found the same confusion painting their faces, except for the brown stallion that was standing a bit away from the group. "Where do you come from for not knowing that war? And why you keep talking about history?"
"Oh, this is gonna be interesting," the brown stallion simply said with a smile.
"You're not helping doc," Mark replied with a quick angry look.
"We come from the future," Applejack simply answered.
All the ponies stared at her with their eyes wide in surprise while the Doctor was laughing. "Well, that's honesty for you alright," Rarity commented.
Freewind's head was moving quickly as he tried to find any sign of them trying to lie to him, but couldn't find any. "What... What are you?"
The Doctor managed to stop laughing only a short while. "It's only getting better," he said between two chuckles.
"He's human," Rarity said while pointing at Mark. "The laughing one is a timelord and for the six other, we are the bearers of the elements of harmony," she explained with a huge smile. She slightly bowed down. "At your services." She winked at Applejack. "I can be honest too."
"What is... I don't..."
"Oh, no fun! You messed up the brain of that poor Windy!" Pinkie Pie said while looking concerned about the gryphon.
"The poor thing!" Fluttershy said with a soft voice.
"And for months, I thought I was crazy," Mark said with a smirk.
Freewind, his eyes wide in panic, was stepping backward as Fluttershy and Pinkie were moving toward him. In a final step, he turned around and took flight, fleeing fast in the dark night.
"Way to go girls," Twilight said.
"He lost it," Applejack added, but she was pointing at the laughing Doctor who was now on his back trying to breath between two laughs.
"Try to get some sleep. We still have days of walk to reach Equestria," Twilight added as she pulled a blanket out of her bag. Doing so, a piece of paper slipped out of her bag. Taking it in her magical aura, she examined it and sent it flying toward the Doctor who was slowly managing to get back on his legs. "Letter for you, Doctor!"
"What?" the Doctor said while taking it in his hooves. He opened it and quickly read the few lines that were covering the paper. As he read it, his hooves started shaking. He dropped the paper in surprise and kept staring at it as it lied on the ground. Tears were coming to his eyes and he didn't bother to wipe them. They felt down and quickly started to cover the paper with wet spots.
The ponies looked at each other in shock, the Doctor passed from the happiest pony to crying rivers. "What's wrong, Doc?" Applejack asked.
"Wrong? Nothing's wrong! It's..." The Doctor said before he finally noticed the tears. "It's alright! Amazing even!"
Twilight picked the paper with her magic and glanced at it, but quickly found out she couldn't make sense of the weird symbols covering it. "What it is?"
"It's... Keeper! He's a timelord!" The Doctor almost shouted with a large smile.
"Our jailor?" Rainbow Dash asked.
"Yes!"
"Well... That's great," Rarity said, unsure how to take the news.
The ponies lied around the fire, each with their blankets. They didn't know how to take the Doctor's sudden burst of emotions and none felt like pressing him to say something he didn’t on his own. Before any other pony managed to fall asleep, Pinkie Pie was already snoring.
Mark walked up to the Doctor, who was standing in his humanoid form in a distance of the fire. He was staring at the night sky with a huge smile on his face.
"I hate this. I almost look like a big dog compared to you now. And to know that I was taller than you before," Mark said.
The Doctor just stood there silent.
"Come on Doc! Spill the beans! You told me you were the last of your kind! What that letter said exactly?"
The Doctor finally stopped staring at the stars. "It's a long story."
"I have time and you look like you could use a listening ear."
"I do?" the Doctor asked with a small smile.
Mark pouted. "Well no. You look somewhat happy, but I'm curious."
"I destroyed my species," the Doctor simply said.
"What?"
"There was a war, a horrible one. All wars are horrible, but this one was hell," the doctor explained while sitting down, his face almost leveled with Mark. "The last great time war. Time, in some aspect, is like a road. If too many people use it at the same place, it gets worn out and can break down. Or if there are too many paradoxes or changes in it. In this war, millions traveled in some specific moment and place to try to do or undo events; two sides trying to destroy each other by preventing the other from existing in the first place. When time itself break down, we call this a timelock. Nobody can enter or exit a place that is timelocked, both by traveling in space or time."
The Doctor sighed and looked at his hands. "Imagine if you made a wrong turn, stepped in the wrong direction and you would age a thousand years in an instant. The timestream regulates how matter age and when it's damaged or destroyed... A timelocked planet is simply a place where nothing can live anymore and all that lived on it is erased from existence... from history"
"That's terrible!"
The Doctor nodded. "This war covered countless planets, hundreds of species. The enemies were numerous and without mercy, religious zealots that believed their species was the only one worthy of living. At first, we fought to protect the other species that couldn't but as the war went on, we fought to survive. At the end, my species decided to 'ascend' at the next level of consciousness to survive it. Their idea was to destroy time itself to get rid of the other side and prevent them from doing the same."
"Is that even possible?"
The Doctor let out a weak smile. "Yes. And they had the will and the means to do it. Had they done it, all species in the universe would have been destroyed, but the timelords would have survived. I understand why they came to this, the horrors I... and they witnessed were beyond what people should ever face in their lives."
Mark sat down and stayed silent.
"I used a weapon, a terrible one. It erased from history both sides of the war. Doing so, it timelocked my planet and hundred others in an instant. I... I couldn't accept what my government had decided. It ended the war. I, and another, were the only ones to survive 'the Moment'. He was dangerous and insane, but he died a while ago. So I was left the lone survivor of the Timelords."
"I know it may not count for much, but I, for one, I'm grateful you did," Mark said. "Thousands species lost... That's a lost that can't be counted. But isn't there billions in this universe?" Mark blinked as he thought he saw something move in the dark. After noticing what it was, he looked back at the Doctor.
The Doctor smiled and closed his eyes. "Yes. That’s why I did it."
"So who is Keeper? Someone you know and managed to survived?"
"No. That weapon was special; it targeted every Timelords and their opponents. It was... instantaneous across time and space. And I knew no 'Keeper'," the Doctor explained.
"How do you know that letter was from a Timelord?"
The Doctor took the letter out of his trench coat and showed it to Mark. He could see the symbols glowing with golden energy. The flow of yellow particles was giving him a headache as he looked at them. "Is that..."
"Yes, only a Timelord can use time itself as ink. Well, that and the fact it’s written in the Timelord language."
"Good enough I guess." Mark thought about it for a moment. "Call me crazy... But aren't you alive?"
The Doctor frowned. "Well yes, I don't..."
"As long as you survive, the timelord does too, no? Well, it's a weird idea, but how about he is your children or grand-children or very remotely grand-grand-grand children?"
"I don't have any!"
"Yet."
The Doctor let the thought sink in his mind. "Well... who know. The universe isn't done surprising me. I doubt I will know, his letter said he would leave as soon as we left the city."
"Doctor... Aren't you named like that because you try to heal or mend the time flow or something like that?"
The Doctor let a small laugh. "It's a way to see it."
"I wonder what Keeper is keeping. Or protecting?" Mark saluted the Doctor and left him too surprised to answer. The Doctor's mind was wiped clean by the pony's last comment. The implications were frightening, but it also awoke something the Doctor thought was dead inside him; hope.
Mark walked away in the dark, toward a lone tree in the plain. The shadow that was moving around froze when it noticed it had been discovered. "Come on Freewind, no need to hide."
"Stay back!"
Mark sat down. "Don't tell me you're afraid of one small pony."
"You're no pony! I saw him transform!"
Mark looked back at the Doctor, who was once again stargazing. He signed. "Yeah, but I'm as pony as one can be."
"The others said you are not!" he shouted back.
Mark let out a long sigh. "Look, I don't have time for a scared chicken. No matter how big the chicken is."
"I'm no chicken!"
"You're the one hiding in the dark and I just don't know what to tell you to snap you out of your fear. What are you scared of anyway?" Mark spitted out while losing patience quickly.
"Strange creatures like you!"
"Oh, that's priceless," Mark let out in between his teeth. "I fought you in that stupid arena, if I wanted you dead, you would be already. Should I swear on my honor that you don't risk anything with us?"
"I... I guess that would be a start," Freewind agreed.
"You lost your 'my master' quickly. Whatever, I swear on my honor that you don't risk anything hanging with us," Mark said as serious as possible. "Beside maybe madness," he whispered to himself.
The gryphon pondered his words for a few moments. He decided that it was the best he could get and stepped out from behind the tree and walked with caution toward the pony. "Seriously, there's stuff out there far more frightening then me or the others. Up to a week ago, I had never seen a gryphon of my life. Shouldn't I be afraid of you? After all, you're many times bigger than me."
"Well... Maybe."
"And you tried to kill me. No doubt, this last year made me insane."
"What?" Freewind asked.
"It's a long story and I'm not sure you're ready for it."
"And then the sphere disappeared and he was now a pony!" Rainbow Dash explained flying above the other ponies with Freewind. They were all walking, or flying, in the direction they hoped was the Everfree forest. It was almost noon and while there was no fog, the cloud level was low and hiding the sky.
"Wow!" Freewind exclaimed. He turned to face Mark. "You really went on the Moon?"
If he wasn't walking right now, he would have put a hoof on his face. "Maybe you were ready to hear that story, but I think it was me who wasn't." He sighed. "Yeah, went on the Moon. In retrospective, it wasn’t the most brilliant idea." Mark was grateful that Rainbow Dash didn't try to explain where he came from, or maybe he simply didn't care or remember. It was hard to say what the cyan pegasus was thinking about. Trying to explain how this was the human's planet a very long time ago didn't feel like a challenge he wanted to take.
"If it sounds stupid but it works, is it really stupid?" Twilight asked.
"Even if it works, it can still be very stupid," Rarity said.
"You should have seen when they nailed his first shoe on. I never saw somepony being that nervous!" Rainbow Dash said laughing.
Mark sighed and rolled his eyes. Trying to explain to Rainbow how human shoes were not nailed on would obviously be a waste of time. Seeing somepony coming toward you with nails and hammer would make any human nervous, he was actually pretty proud of how he didn't just run away screaming.
"And before you looked like the Doctor?" the gryphon asked.
"Yeah, a bit like him."
"You looked weird then," Freewind said and quickly turned to the Doctor. "I didn't mean any insults."
The Doctor rolled his eyes and shrugged. "I heard far worst."
"I mean, walking on two legs and no tail to balance yourself? That's very odd! It does explain what you tried to fight me on two legs," the gryphon added.
"You did what?" Applejack asked in surprise.
For once Mark was happy of his dark coat as it hid his face turning red in shame. "Sounded like a good idea at the time."
"Did it work?" Twilight asked with a laugh.
"Would have... If I had been in my human body."
"So, it was stupid and it didn't work?" Applejack added.
Mark sighed. "Pretty much."
"I'm pretty sure the gryphons will speak of the crazy blue pony for years to come," explained Freewind. "But while it was pretty epic tail Rainbow Dash, it doesn't explain why you came back in time."
Rainbow scratched his neck. "Well you see... The princesses gave us a kind of indirect message and..."
"Princesses? What princesses?" the gryphon interrupted her.
The six mares exchanged a look. "Celestia and Luna, the two princesses who rule Equestria," Twilight explained.
"Really? You call them princesses in the future? Here the ponies call them goddesses,"
All the ponies shared a concerned look. "Well, they are powerful... and old. But they are no goddesses," Rarity countered.
"Well, the war was started in the names."
Mark got close to the Doctor and whispered to him. "Religious war?"
"The worst kind," the Doctor replied with a sigh.
"That doesn't make any sense!" Twilight shouted. "Why would the princesses start a war? And then take centuries after that to hide it only to send us here to find all about it! Ponies are no religious zealot, we are peaceful!"
"They will be. But can you really claim they never were?" Mark asked.
"I... I don't know."
"Maybe we are here to stop it?" Pinkie Pie proposed.
"Eight random unknown ponies appear and just like that stop a decade long war?" Applejack asked skeptical.
Pinkie banked her head. "Why not?"
"The ponies are conquering our lands and destroying our villages in the name of their goddesses. They refused all kind of peace talk or any compromises. Then the war turned into a long stalemate. The lines between our forces and theirs hadn't moved much in the last three years." Freewind explained. "Thousands died on both sides."
"Well, maybe it would cheer you up to know that in the future we are allies," Fluttershy said.
The gryphon didn't look impressed by the idea. "Well, I..." he started but was interrupted by a loud nearby sound. About a dozen meters away from them, a round sphere made of iron had landed in the dirt. A hole on its side was spitting sparks.
Mark stared in surprise at the intruding object. "Oh sh..."